seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Author Archives: Jim Doyle


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Ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty

anglo-irish-treaty-negotiatorsThe Anglo-Irish Treaty is ratified by the Parliament of the United Kingdom on December 16, 1921. It is ratified by the British House of Commons by a vote of 401 to 58. On the same day the House of Lords votes in favour by 166 to 47.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty, commonly known as “The Treaty” and officially the “Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland,” is an agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and representatives of the Irish Republic that concludes the Irish War of Independence. It provides for the establishment of the Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion within the “community of nations known as the British Empire,” a status “the same as that of the Dominion of Canada.” It also provides Northern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, an option to opt out of the Irish Free State, which it exercises.

The agreement is signed in London on December 6, 1921, by representatives of the Government of the United Kingdom, which includes Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who is head of the British delegates, and by representatives of the Irish Republic including Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. The Irish representatives have plenipotentiary status (negotiators empowered to sign a treaty without reference back to their superiors) acting on behalf of the Irish Republic, though the British government declines to recognise that status. As required by its terms, the agreement is ratified by “a meeting” of the members elected to sit in the House of Commons of Southern Ireland and separately by the British Parliament.

Éamon de Valera calls a cabinet meeting to discuss the treaty on December 8, where he comes out against the treaty as signed. The cabinet decides by four votes to three to recommend the treaty to Dáil Éireann on December 14. Though the treaty is narrowly ratified, the split leads to the Irish Civil War, which is won by the pro-treaty side.

The Irish Free State as contemplated by the treaty comes into existence when its constitution becomes law on December 6, 1922 by a royal proclamation giving the force of law to the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922.

(Pictured: Members of the Irish negotiation committee returning to Ireland in December 1921)


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Birth of Edna O’Brien, Novelist, Playwright & Poet

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Edna O’Brien, novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer, is born in Tuamgraney, County Clare on December 15, 1930. Philip Roth describes her as “the most gifted woman now writing in English,” while the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson cites her as “one of the great creative writers of her generation.” Her works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men, and to society as a whole.

O’Brien is the youngest child of “a strict, religious family.” From 1941 to 1946 she is educated by the Sisters of Mercy, a circumstance that contributes to a “suffocating” childhood. “I rebelled against the coercive and stifling religion into which I was born and bred. It was very frightening and all pervasive. I’m glad it has gone.” She is fond of a nun as she deeply misses her mum and tries to identify the nun with her mother.

In 1950, O’Brien is awarded a licence as a pharmacist. In Ireland, she reads such writers as Leo Tolstoy, William Makepeace Thackeray, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1954, she marries, against her parents’ wishes, the Irish writer Ernest Gébler and the couple moves to London. They have two sons, but the marriage is dissolved in 1964. Gébler dies in 1998.

In London, O’Brien purchases Introducing James Joyce, with an introduction written by T. S. Eliot. When she learns that James Joyce‘s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is autobiographical, it makes her realise where she might turn, should she decide to write herself. In London she starts work as a reader for Hutchinson, where on the basis of her reports she is commissioned, for £50, to write a novel. Her first novel, The Country Girls (1960), is often credited with breaking silence on sexual matters and social issues during a repressive period in Ireland following World War II.

This novel is the first part of a trilogy of novels which includes The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). Shortly after their publication, these books are banned and, in some cases burned, in her native country due to their frank portrayals of the sex lives of their characters. Her novel A Pagan Place (1970) is about her repressive childhood. Her parents are vehemently against all things related to literature and her mother strongly disapproves of her daughter’s career as a writer.

O’Brien is a panel member for the first edition of the BBC‘s Question Time in 1979. In 2017, she becomes the sole surviving member.

In 1980, she writes a play, Virginia, about Virginia Woolf, and it is staged originally in June 1980 at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada and subsequently in the West End of London at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Maggie Smith and directed by Robin Phillips. It is staged at The Public Theater in New York City in 1985.

Other works include a biography of James Joyce, published in 1999, and one of the poet Lord Byron, Byron in Love (2009). House of Splendid Isolation (1994), her novel about a terrorist who goes on the run, marks a new phase in her writing career. Down by the River (1996) concerns an under-age rape victim who seeks an abortion in England, the “Miss X case.” In the Forest (2002) deals with the real-life case of Brendan O’Donnell, who abducts and murders a woman, her three-year-old son, and a priest, in rural Ireland.

O’Brien now lives in London. She receives the Irish PEN Award in 2001. Saints and Sinners wins the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the world’s richest prize for a short story collection. Faber and Faber publish her memoir, Country Girl, in 2012. In 2015, she is bestowed Saoi by Aosdána.


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The Bottle Riot

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On December 14, 1822, a “bottle riot” takes place at a performance of Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. Among those in attendance is the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Richard Wellesley, the brother of the Duke of Wellington. Wellesley is quite unpopular at the time among Orange Order members in the city, owing to what they perceive as his role in stopping an annual ceremony at the statue of King William of Orange on College Green, and other perceived concessions to the Catholic population.

The statue is the location for annual rituals organised by loyalist elements in the city, with events held in July and November being flashpoints on the Dublin calendar. Heavily criticised by Daniel O’Connell and other nationalist voices, Dublin Castle distances itself from the ceremonies, but it is the eventual banning of the November ceremony which infuriates the Orange Order into action.

Following clashes at the event in July 1822, a decision is made by Marquess Wellesley, in his capacity as Lord Lieutenant, to seek a ban against the November event. A heavy military presence prevents the traditional loyalist display. This decision causes great resentment towards Wellesley from loyalists in the city, as would other actions such as appointing a Catholic lawyer to a position of importance in the courts. A visit by him to the Theatre Royal is seen as an opportunity to show that discontent. The Theatre Royal on Hawkins Street is relatively new at the time, having only opened the previous year. The announcement that the Lord Lieutenant would be attending the theatre causes considerable excitement in the city.

Six men meet in a tavern on Wednesday, December 11, all members of the Orange Order. John and George Atkinson, James Forbes, William Graham and Henry and Matthew Handwith drink to “the glorious, immortal and pious memory” of King William of Orange, plotting a protest against the Lord Lieutenant which would grab the attention of the city. On December 13, a meeting of Lodge 1612 of the Orange Order on Werburgh Street decides to fund the purchase of twelve pit tickets for the upcoming play, with the aim of creating a scene which would embarrass the Lord Lieutenant.

The trouble begins inside the theatre with the tossing of pamphlets with the slogan “No Popery” upon them, most of which drift towards the stage. There are some cries of “No Popish Lord Lieutenant,” and the Lord Mayor of Dublin is also subject to ridicule. The play begins as planned, only to be interrupted throughout. A series of items are thrown in the direction of the Lord Lieutenant. The event comes to be known as “The Bottle Riot” in Dublin, owing to the missiles thrown. While the Lord Lieutenant is never in any real physical danger, the incident is hugely embarrassing for the authorities, with mob rule taking centre stage at one of Dublin’s most prestigious venues.

Several days later, the behaviour of the Orangemen is the subject of a protest meeting in Dublin. This meeting is significant as it is addressed by some hugely influential figures, including the Duke of Leinster, Daniel O’Connell, Henry Grattan, Jr. and Arthur Guinness II, son of the famous brewer. Guinness denounces the men as a “mischievous faction” and calls for them to be opposed “by the severe but wholesome discipline of the laws.”

While the instigators of the affair are brought in front of the courts on two separate occasions, both cases collapse causing much anger. Lord Chief Justice of Ireland Charles Kendal Bushe remarks to the jury in his summation that “an audience may cry down a play, or hiss, or hoot an actor,” but that riotous behaviour is not permitted. One effect of the mini riot is the outlawing of the Orange Order for a period, when the Unlawful Societies Act of 1825 comes into being.

(Pictured: Undated postcard showing the monument of King William of Orange on College Green)


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Battle at Marye’s Heights

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Irish fight Irish in one of the bloodiest days in Irish military history at Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg, Virginia on December 13, 1862, during the American Civil War. The Union Army’s Irish Brigade, the Fighting 69th, is decimated by the Confederate States Army during multiple efforts to take Marye’s Heights. In his official report Thomas Francis Meagher writes, “of the one thousand and two hundred I led into action, only two hundred and eighty appeared on parade next morning.”

The Battle of Fredericksburg, fought December 11-15, 1862, is one of the largest and deadliest of the war. It features the first major opposed river crossing in American military history. Union and Confederate troops fight in the streets of Fredericksburg, the war’s first urban combat. And with nearly 200,000 combatants, no other Civil War battle features a larger concentration of soldiers.

Major General Ambrose Burnside’s plan at Fredericksburg is to use the nearly 60,000 men in Major General William B. Franklin’s Left Grand Division to crush General Robert E. Lee’s southern flank on Prospect Hill while the rest of his army holds Lt. Gen. James Longstreet and the Confederate First Corps in position at Marye’s Heights.

The Union army’s main assault against Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson produces initial success and holds the promise of destroying the Confederate right, but lack of reinforcements and Jackson’s powerful counterattack stymies the effort. Both sides suffer heavy losses (totaling 9,000 in killed, wounded and missing) with no real change in the strategic situation.

In the meantime, Burnside’s “diversion” against veteran Confederate soldiers behind a stone wall produces a similar number of casualties but most of these are suffered by the Union troops. Wave after wave of Federal soldiers march forth to take the heights, but each is met with devastating rifle and artillery fire from the nearly impregnable Confederate positions.

As darkness falls on a battlefield strewn with dead and wounded, it is abundantly clear that a signal Confederate victory is at hand. The Army of the Potomac has suffered nearly 12,600 casualties, nearly two-thirds of them in front of Marye’s Heights. By comparison, Lee’s army has suffered some 5,300 losses. Lee, watching the great Confederate victory unfolding from his hilltop command post exclaims, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”

Roughly six weeks after the Battle of Fredericksburg, President Abraham Lincoln removes Burnside from command of the Army of the Potomac.


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Birth of Daniel O’Donnell, Singer & Presenter

daniel-o-donnell

Daniel Francis Noel O’Donnell, singer, television presenter and philanthropist affectionately known as “Wee Daniel,” is born in Kincasslagh, County Donegal on December 12, 1961. After rising to public attention in 1983 he has since become a household name in Ireland and Britain. He has also had considerable success in the United States and Australia. In 2012, he becomes the first artist to have a different album in the British charts every year for 25 consecutive years.

Known for his close relationship with his fanbase, and his charismatic and engaging stage presence, O’Donnell’s music has been described as a mix of country and Irish folk. He has had twenty UK Top 40 albums as well as fifteen Top 40 singles and has sold 10 million records to date. He is widely considered a “cultural icon” in Ireland, and is often parodied in the media.

During his school years, O’Donnell considers pursuing a career in banking. Despite this, a career in music is also always a possibility. As a youngster, O’Donnell performs in the local religious choir. In 1980, he goes to Galway to pursue business studies, however, he never settles down and by Christmas he is in his sister Margo‘s band.

Not getting enough opportunities to perform solos with the band, in 1983 O’Donnell decides to record his own record. On February 9, 1983, he records his first single, Johnny McCauley‘s My Donegal Shore, with £1,200 of his own money, selling all the copies himself. Later that year, he forms his own musical group, Country Fever. After the group disbands, he forms The Grassroots. In 1985, the manager of the Ritz label, Mick Clerkin, sees him perform and introduces him to Sean Reilly, who remains as his manager to this day.

Under Reilly’s management, O’Donnell starts to sell concerts out in England on a regular basis. By January 1992, he has hit rock bottom with exhaustion. After a three-month recovery break, he returns to the stage, this time at the Point Theatre, Dublin.

By the mid-1990s, O’Donnell has become a household name across Ireland and Great Britain. He appears on popular television shows in both countries and wins various awards. Among the accolades, he is named Donegal Person of the Year in 1989, which he still rates as the best award. He is given the Irish Entertainer of the Year award in 1989, 1992 and 1996. His first chart hit single in the UK is in 1992 with I Just Want to Dance With You (later covered by George Strait). This also leads to his first-ever appearance on Top of the Pops.

During his lengthy career, O’Donnell has made friends with his childhood idols, including Cliff Richard and Loretta Lynn. He has also forged a close professional relationship with the Irish songstress Mary Duff, who regularly tours with O’Donnell.

On November 4, 2002, O’Donnell marries Majella McLennan from Thurles, whom he had met on holiday in Tenerife three years previously. The couple lives in Meenbanad, County Donegal, and spend time at their second home in Tenerife.


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Death of Christie Hennessy, Folk Singer-Songwriter

christie-hennessyChristie Hennessy, Irish folk singer-songwriter, dies in London on December 11, 2007. Although Hennessy is unable to read or write due to severe dyslexia, he still writes his own songs such as “Roll back the Clouds” and “All the lies that you told me.”

Hennessy is born in Tralee, County Kerry on November 19, 1945. His first guitar is made, especially for him, from a tea chest when he is six years old by his friend Jerry Quirke. He leaves school at the age of eleven.

Hennessy’s first job is as a messenger boy, and it is then that he discovers that it is important to be able to read. He is unable to read or write due to severe dyslexia, but still enjoys his library of books. He later works on building sites in London.

In 1972 Hennessy releases his first record, The Green Album, on Westwood, a small label. With scant publicity or promotion, the album makes little impact and only 500 copies of the record are pressed. He returns to labouring on building sites in the UK and does not release another album for twenty years. When he does, his 1992 release The Rehearsal outsells U2 in Ireland, eventually attaining triple platinum status. His following albums, A Year in the Life and Box also sell extremely well in Ireland.

A renowned songwriter as well as performer, Hennessy writes several songs that become hits for other singers including Don’t Forget your Shovel, made famous by Christy Moore, and All the Lies that You Told Me, recorded by Frances Black. He also composes the theme tune and incidental music for the BBC TV series Get Well Soon written by Ray Galton (of Steptoe & Son fame) and composes and writes a musical/feature film about his native Ireland, Two Stops to Paradise.

In 2005, Christy Moore’s rendition of Hennessy’s Don’t Forget Your Shovel is referenced in a UK Number One single JCB by Nizlopi. It is further referenced in the video for the same song. As the line is sung, the characters in the JCB pass a shop called “Christie’s Shovels.”

Hennessy returns to the studio in 2007, one final time to record an album with both Luka Bloom and Christy Moore sharing vocals on one of the tracks.

Christie Hennessy dies on December 11, 2007 in a London hospice, at the age of 62. He is reported to have died from pleural mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer, which has been attributed to his younger years spent working on building sites in London where he was exposed to asbestos dust. Just before he dies he had been touring in Ireland but had to cancel due to the illness. His ashes are buried in Old Rath Cemetery, Tralee. A commemorative statue of Christie is erected in Central Plaza, just off the town square in Tralee in November 2009.


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Birth of Kenneth Branagh, Actor, Director & Producer

kenneth-branagh

Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh, British actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, is born in Belfast on December 10, 1960.

Branagh is the middle of three children of working-class Protestant parents Frances (née Harper) and William Branagh, a plumber and joiner who runs a company that specialises in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings. He lives in the Tiger’s Bay area of the city and is educated at Grove Primary School.

At the age of nine, Branagh moves with his family to Reading, Berkshire, England, to escape the Troubles. He is educated at Whiteknights Primary School, then Meadway School, Tilehurst, where he appears in school productions such as Toad of Toad Hall and Oh, What a Lovely War!. He attends the amateur Reading Cine & Video Society (now called Reading Film & Video Makers) as a member and is a keen member of Progress Theatre for whom he is now the patron. He goes on to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and in 2015 succeeds Richard Attenborough as its president.

Branagh has both directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare‘s plays, including Henry V (1989) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and Academy Award for Best Director), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay), Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000), and As You Like It (2006).

Branagh stars in numerous other films and television series including Fortunes of War (1987), Woody Allen‘s Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Conspiracy (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Warm Springs (2005), as Major General Henning von Tresckow in Valkyrie (2008), The Boat That Rocked (2009), Wallander (2008–2016), My Week with Marilyn (2011) as Sir Laurence Olivier (nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), and as Royal Navy Commander Bolton in the action-thriller Dunkirk (2017). He directs such films as Dead Again (1991), in which he also stars, Swan Song (1992) (nominated for Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) in which he also stars, The Magic Flute (2006), Sleuth (2007), the blockbuster superhero film Thor (2011), the action thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) in which he also co-stars, the live-action film Cinderella (2015), and the mystery drama adaptation of Agatha Christie‘s Murder on the Orient Express (2017), in which he also stars as Hercule Poirot.

Branagh narrates the series Cold War (1998), the BBC documentary miniseries Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), Walking with Beasts (2001) and Walking with Monsters (2005). He has been nominated for five Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, and has won three BAFTAs, and an Emmy Award. He is appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours and is knighted on November 9, 2012. He is awarded the Freedom of the City of his native city of Belfast in January 2018.


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Inaugural Meeting of the Irish Management Institute

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The Irish Management Institute, an educational institute in Dublin that offers Postgraduate Diplomas, Master’s Degrees, executive education programs and short courses in Business and Management, holds its inaugural meeting on December 9, 1952. In its role as a membership organisation it connects businesses around its mission of improving the practice of management in Ireland.

The idea for the institute originates from a committee set up by Michael Dargan, T.P. Hogan and other businessmen. The motivation is to establish an organisation that will further the science and practice of business management in Ireland. Those involved are inspired primarily by the American Management Association and The Conference Board. At the same time the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, has prompted a separate group of leading semi-state and private bosses into investigating a similar idea. Both groups merge and the inaugural meeting of the Irish Management Institute is held on December 9, 1952, in the Gresham Hotel. The founding chairman is Sir Charles Harvey.

The objective of the institute is to raise the standard of management in Ireland. Originally it does this through corporate and personal memberships, regular lectures and conferences, a journal called Irish Management, research and the establishment of a member’s library. After its first decade the institute becomes involved in management training courses.

Part of IMI’s original brief has been to encourage the universities to develop management education. In the early 1960s both University College Dublin (UCD) and Trinity College Dublin introduce master’s degrees in management. This is an indication of management’s growing stature as an academic discipline. In turn IMI creates the Sir Charles Harvey Award for exceptional graduates of these courses. The first recipient is Patrick J. Murphy.

IMI later goes on to become a provider of education. Its popular Certificate in Supervisory Management (CISM) is the first academic course run by IMI and is the institute’s first progression into all-island distance learning. In 1973 IMI partners with Trinity for the Master of Science in Management (MSc). The MSc epitomises IMI’s teaching philosophy and is notable for being the first management degree in the world to be based on action learning. Related courses follow over the next three decades. Other affiliations with Irish universities include a master’s in information technology development with NUI Galway and a research alliance with the University of Limerick. In 2003 IMI launches their support and delivery of the Flexible Executive Henley MBA programme.

An alliance between University College Cork and the Irish Management Institute is announced in June 2011 by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. The IMI and UCC had been collaborating since 2009. As of 2014, the majority of the degrees offered by the IMI are accredited by UCC. UCC controversially purchases the IMI and it is merged into UCC.


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The Execution of Rory O’Connor

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Rory O’Connor, Irish republican revolutionary, is executed by firing squad on December 8, 1922, in reprisal for the anti-treaty Irish Republican Army‘s (IRA) killing of Irish Free State member of parliament Sean Hales.

O’Connor is born in Kildare Street, Dublin on November 28, 1883. He is educated at St. Mary’s College, Dublin and then in Clongowes Wood College, a public school run by the Jesuit order and also attended by James Joyce, and his close friend Kevin O’Higgins, the man who later condemns him to death.

In 1910 O’Connor takes his Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts degrees in University College Dublin, then known as the National University. He goes to work as a railway engineer in Ireland, then moves to Canada, where he is an engineer in the Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian Northern Railway, being responsible for the construction of 1,500 miles of railroad.

After his return to Ireland, O’Connor becomes involved in Irish nationalist politics, joins the Ancient Order of Hibernians and is interned after the Easter Rising in 1916.

During the subsequent Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) O’Connor is made Director of Engineering of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – a military organisation descended from the Irish Volunteers.

O’Connor does not accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which establishes the Irish Free State and abolishes the Irish Republic declared in 1916, which he and his comrades had sworn to uphold. On March 26, 1922, the anti-treaty officers of the IRA hold a convention in Dublin in which they reject the Treaty compromise and repudiate the authority of the Dáil, the elected Irish Parliament. Asked by a journalist if this means they are proposing a military dictatorship in Ireland, O’Connor replies, “you can take it that way if you want.”

On April 14, 1922, O’Connor, with 200 other hardline anti-treaty IRA men under his command, takes over the Four Courts building in the centre of Dublin in defiance of the new Irish government. They want to provoke the British troops, who are still in the country, into attacking them, which they believe will restart the war with Britain and re-unite the IRA against their common enemy. Michael Collins tries desperately to persuade O’Connor and his men to leave the building before fighting breaks out.

On June 28, 1922, after the Four Courts garrison has kidnapped JJ “Ginger” O’Connell, a general in the new Free State Army, Collins shells the Four Courts with borrowed British artillery. O’Connor surrenders after two days of fighting and is arrested and held in Mountjoy Prison. This incident sparks the Irish Civil War as fighting breaks out around the country between pro and anti-treaty factions.

On December 8, 1922, along with Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Joe McKelvey, three other republicans captured with the fall of the Four Courts, Rory O’Connor is executed by firing squad in reprisal for the anti-treaty IRA’s killing of Free State member of parliament Sean Hales. The execution order is given by Kevin O’Higgins, who less than a year earlier had appointed O’Connor to be best man at his wedding, symbolising the bitterness of the division that the Treaty has caused. O’Connor, one of 77 republicans executed by the Cumann na nGaedheal government of the Irish Free State, is seen as a martyr by the Republican movement in Ireland.


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Birth of St. Columba

St. Columba, also called Colum or Columcille, Irish abbot and missionary Evangelist is born on December 7, 521, in Tír Chonaill (mainly modern County Donegal) in the north of Ireland. He is credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission. He also founds the important abbey on Iona, which becomes a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries. He is the Patron Saint of Derry and is highly regarded by both the Gaels of Dál Riata and the Picts. Today he is remembered as a Catholic saint and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.

Columba studies under Saints Finnian of Movilla and Finnian of Clonard and is ordained into the priesthood around 551. He founds churches and the famous monasteries Daire Calgaich, in Derry, and Dair-magh, in Durrow.

Columba and his twelve disciples erect a church and monastery on the island of Iona (c. 563) as their springboard for the conversion of Scotland. It is regarded as the mother house and its abbots as the chief ecclesiastical rulers even of the bishops. Columba gives formal benediction and inauguration to Áedán mac Gabráin of Dunadd as king of Dál Riata.

Columba accompanies Aidan to Ireland in 575 and takes a leading role in a council held at Druim Cetta, which determines the position of the ruler of Dál Riata in relation to the king of Ireland. The last years of Columba’s life are apparently primarily spent in Iona, where he is already revered as a saint. He and his associates and successors spread the gospel more than any other contemporary group of religious pioneers in Britain.

Columba dies on Iona and is buried in 597 by his monks in the abbey he created. In 794 the Vikings descend on Iona. Columba’s relics are finally removed in 849 and divided between Scotland and Ireland. The parts of the relics which go to Ireland are reputed to be buried in Downpatrick, County Down, with St. Patrick and St. Brigid or at Saul Church neighbouring Downpatrick.

Three Latin hymns may be attributed to Columba with some degree of certainty. Excavations in 1958 and 1959 revealed Columba’s living cell and the outline of the original monastery.

St. Columba’s Feast Day, 9 June, has been designated as International Celtic Art Day. The Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, great medieval masterpieces of Celtic art, are associated with Columba.